By Jim Hoover

If you think that our most influential institutions have not been compromised by the power elite’s money, you only need to look at the Standard and Poor (S&P) credit-rating agency that just downgraded the US’s credit rating from AAA to AA+.

You would have to be un-tethered from society not to know that the media and politicians have tossed off this same role of guarding our interest. Each is poisoned by the money that sustains them. But we must be clear that Republicans poison the water of democracy while Democrats just pass it, due to re-election anxiety.

Also poisoned by money are the rating agencies that are supposed to provide guidance to investors, creditors, and consumers. Moody, Fitch, and Standard & Poor (S&P) are all prime examples of agencies that have been functionally corrupted.

It is true that America is no longer the stable, reliable country it once was, but it is also true that S&P has even lower credibility, demonstrating a hypocrisy grown quite common in America.

America’s large budget deficit, citizen anger, a tanked economy, and mass unemployment are all plagues unleashed by greed-mongers, one of the last blameworthy guardians in this broken chain, being the compromised rating agencies, including S&P, giving top rating to mortgage-backed assets that later proved to be toxic waste. Notoriously, S&P gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise.

S&P looked even more ridiculous when it sent a preliminary draft of its press release to the U.S. Treasury, which quickly spotted a $2 trillion error in S&P’s calculations. And the error was the kind of thing any budget expert should have gotten right. After discussion, S&P conceded that it was wrong — and downgraded America anyway, that is after removing some of the economic data.

It all proves that agendas trump the truth. For example, a deluded Michelle Bachmann saw the downgrade as affirmation of her stand against voting for raising the debt ceiling. “I was right,” she disingenuously said.

Credit rating agencies have been compromised for years, for in November of 2001 all rated Enron credit-worthy, even days before the infamous company, which had a personal Bush connection with its CEO, declared bankruptcy.

Being a for-profit entity, credit-rating incentives are misaligned. Conflicts of interest often arise because all rating agencies are paid by the companies issuing the securities — an arrangement that makes for a misplaced vigilance, seeming to favor investors over all else.

The influence of money obviously has spread through our nation like a virulent cancer. To wit,  S&P declared a downgrade due to a bogus debt-ceiling debate, a debate inspired by a stimulus which came because of the mortgage fraud debacle which credit-rating agencies overlooked. But we can go on. Tea Party candidates were swept into power with tons of money. That tsunami of  money in 2010 was released by a Supreme Court decision, Citizens United. Notably two of the conservative justices voting for it, Scalia and Thomas, were enriched by plutocrats but did not recuse themselves in that decision.

Most Republicans have signed a Grover Norquist (an unelected conservative tax-hater) pledge to never raise taxes, even while all Republicans are unified behind a plan to defeat Obama at all costs. Republican loyalty to plutocrats has been bought with only a few million dollars, an investment giving them a myriad of benefits from an extremist Republican Party, including Norquist pledges to attack any tax increases for the rich, gut the EPA, stop consumer protection, and halt regulation of Wall Street.

The bottom line is that we could easily solve our economic problems with higher taxes on the rich and a reduction in inflated health care costs – two conditions that other advanced countries have solved, having much lower health care costs than the privatized US system, and allowing higher taxes on the rich.

What makes America look unreliable isn’t budget deficits. It is politics. And please, let’s not make the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided — specifically, they’re caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.

We can see that blame can be spread around for the economic crisis we are still fighting. Many of us enabled it by taking tiny shares before Armageddon came, but usually without the fraud and forethought of a cadre of Wall Street brokers, financial moguls, politicians of both stripes and rating agencies like S&P, all who still reign like royals.